


Embers

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Jedi Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25503730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: Six years ago, Jedi apprentice Ben Solo burnt his master's temple down and fled into the Unknown Regions. No one has seen or heard from him since.Now, with the destruction of Starkiller Base, the war against the First Order has reached its tipping point. Rey sets out to bring the Resistance's lost son back home.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 80
Collections: Eat Drink and Make Merry 2020





	Embers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



They tell Rey what she needs to know: about the burnt temple, the family estrangement, the long years of no contact. As the ashes of Starkiller float through space, they punch new coordinates into the Falcon’s navicomputer and send her on a journey to find the help they so desperately need. She's going to a world called Ahch-To in a far-flung nook of the Unknown Regions, where they say one of the last two Jedi left in the galaxy lives in self-imposed exile.

‘It’s best if you go alone,’ Han Solo says. ‘He might be more willing to listen to you than to any of us.’

‘He won’t hurt you,’ General Leia adds, her voice uncharacteristically thin.

Rey isn’t scared. She can defend herself, if it comes to that.

‘This feels wrong.’ Master Skywalker hangs back from the other two; there’s tension in the lines of his face. It’s the closest thing to a real emotion she’s seen from him since arriving on the Resistance base. ‘I should be the one to go. Or at least go with her.’

Leia grips his shoulder. Something unspoken passes between them. A clean slate, they called her earlier when they first floated the plan, like they can’t see the years of Jakku dirt crusted under Rey’s fingernails. There’s something flowing through her veins that she doesn’t remember putting there: it’s gluey, viscous, makes her snag on other people’s thoughts and stick to the natural world around her. She sees fragments of the future. Hears echoes of the past. If she falls from a height, she feels in her bones that the air will catch her. She’s anything but clean. And she can’t tell any of these people, these living legends whose names she knows from stories, who want her to carry the weight of the free galaxy for them. She hasn’t dared touch the blade Maz Kanata gave her. Hasn’t shown it to anyone.

She thought Jedi Master Luke Skywalker might notice, but he hasn’t. Doesn’t seem to care.

‘Find my son, Rey,’ Leia says at last, once Luke has retreated back into his shell of silence. ‘Bring him home.’ It’s an order and a plea, and Rey can’t refuse either.

* * *

She’s looking forward to meeting a real Jedi. Not a retired, embittered one like Luke, but someone who wields the Force with pride like the heroes of old Republic-era stories. She’s sure he’ll set her fears to rest: his power will make her feel small and awestruck, and he’ll laugh with sincere good humour at the thing awake inside her. _Yes, that’s the Force,_ he’ll say, confirming her largest fear and shrinking it to nothing in a single breath. _But it’s not very strong with you. Don’t worry – you won’t need it. I’ll come and win the war._ And she’ll give him the lightsaber, and her role in the story will be over.

Then she meets Ben Solo and it all goes sideways.

He’s … well, he looks roughly like a Jedi, with his linen robes and chin length hair. He has a weapon hilt clipped to his belt like the horrid thing Rey found in Maz’s castle dungeons. Strong arms. Broad, hard-working shoulders. Tall. But there’s something off about him, something Rey can hardly put into words – an extreme, un-Jedi-like vulnerability. Like he’s prey as much as predator. She’s met plenty of both on Jakku. She knows all too well that the most dangerous fighters are often the ones who aren’t sure they can win. 

Ben Solo looks ready to lose at any minute. Instead of feeling awestruck, Rey is immediately saddled with the uncomfortable certainty that there’s work to be done. Jedi or not, this man is barely an upgrade to Luke Skywalker on the hero front.

 _You know him,_ says the thing inside her, like a shadow of her memory, like a piece of her soul that knows something she doesn't. A speculative, less spiritual voice adds that she mightn’t mind _getting_ to know him, under other circumstances. But the Resistance is counting on her. The galaxy is counting on her. This isn’t the time for getting to know – they need the Jedi back.

He turns red to the tips of his oversized ears when she greets him as Master Solo. ‘It’s just Ben,’ he says, eyes wide and astonished as if he’s never seen anyone like her before.

Then she tells him why she’s come – recites the script Leia taught her – and his expression darkens, and Rey knows she’s right about the looming workload.

 _You’ve known him all your life,_ the thing inside her insists. _He’s part of you. Part of us._

If it doesn’t have anything useful to say, she’d rather it just shut up.

* * *

Ben’s only friends on the island are a small troupe of what look to Rey like sentient fish-birds, all dressed in matching white habits with their spindly seagull legs sticking out the bottom. While she and Ben sit by the fire, the caretakers roast something that could be a distant relative: huge and scaly, impaled on a spit from mouth to tail, cooking slowly over the open flame and dripping juices that sizzle on the coals.

The smell makes Rey’s mouth water. It’s meat but not meat, with a salty tang like the ocean winds. She’s never tasted fish before. She wraps her oilskin cloak tighter and says: ‘For the last time, it’s not about me. The Resistance needs your help.’

‘You have the Force, Rey. I sense it in you.’ Her first impressions of Ben have held true. He’s recovered from the shock of her arrival and is trying hard to seem confident and wise, but too much self-conscious anxiety leaks into his would-be-lofty manner. He wins points for at least trying to act like a Jedi, which is more than Luke’s ever done for Rey. He loses them by rattling on and on about the last thing she wants to discuss. ‘You have no idea how rare it is to have power like yours. I could teach you.’

‘Could you teach me in the next few weeks? Because that’s about how long it’ll take the First Order to control all remaining free worlds. We need the Jedi back. We need you and Luke Skywalker to put the past behind you for the greater good.’

‘It won’t go back to sleep if you ignore it. It’s awake in you now. Sooner or later, you’ll have to face that.’

‘Later is fine, thank you. Did I mention that the First Order has become unstoppable? Because–’

‘Luke Skywalker toppled an empire once before. I’m sure he can do it again.’ Ben’s voice is dismissive, as though Luke’s legendary battle with Darth Vader is something far beneath his notice. ‘If he needed my help, he should have thought of that before–’

‘Before what? Before letting you destroy half his life’s work and steal the other half?’ Rey’s temper flares. ‘They told me what happened, you know. You stole decades of his research on the origins of the Jedi Order, then burnt his temple to the ground and ran away to start your own. All because the two of you disagreed over who was more powerful.’

Reciprocal anger flares in Ben. Rey can feel it, though she doesn’t want to. The force inside her is gone on him, preoccupied by _we know him he’s part of us he’s half of a whole we need to look deeper we need to_ – shut up. Not now. This isn’t what the Resistance sent her for. ‘You’re a gullible fool,’ he says, with what he clearly intends to be chilly composure that melts in the heat of the nearby firepit. ‘My own temple? You think I’m out here teaching fish nuns how to lift rocks with their minds? Look around, Rey. Open your eyes. Luke Skywalker’s a liar and I’m never going back. You shouldn’t, either.’

‘If Luke Skywalker’s a liar, then tell me the truth. Tell me how you can justify hiding on this island while the galaxy burns.’

The flames dance and crackle. The caretakers lift the fish up onto a higher rung of the spit, and one withdraws a wicked-looking knife from somewhere inside her sleeve. Ben watches them in silence. His eyes linger on the blade.

‘When there’s fire,’ he says at last, ‘the last thing you want is to add more fuel. Trust me. The galaxy’s better off without my help.’

He leaves her there alone, slamming the door of his rough stone hut behind him. A caretaker serves Rey a hunk of fish dusted with granules of gleaming salt. It’s delicious: the skin crackles when she bites, giving way to moist, tender flesh that flakes apart on her tongue. It’s so hot it burns and so good she doesn’t mind. She waits for the mouth-watering smells to lure Ben back out of his hut, but they don’t. So she eats his portion, too.

* * *

‘I’ll show you how to catch purplefin,’ Ben says, as they trek over jagged rock towards the enclave where he keeps his harpoon. He’s calmed down for a sleep. They’re apparently pretending the eruption last night never happened.

‘I don’t want to learn how to catch purplefin. I want to get back on the Falcon with you and go save the galaxy from certain destruction.’

‘I can only get it for about three months of a standard Ahch-To year. Tastes a lot like wookieefish, if you’ve ever had that.’

Rey hasn’t.

She spent her first night on the island restless, disturbed by dreams of places she’s never seen and voices she’s never heard. Shadows stole across her mind’s eye, chased by a whisper that said _burn it all down_ and _take up Lord Vader’s mantle_ and other similarly opaque nonsense. Worse still were the guest appearances by Ben, in a form that makes her blush to look at him this morning.

‘And it’s laying season, so I might be able to find some porg eggs if we climb out on the nesting rocks. The caretakers use them for baking. They’re hard to reach, and there’s a small risk of plummeting off the cliff to a premature watery death, but.’ He shrugs, and heaves the long harpoon up on his shoulder. ‘It’s worth it for the syrup cake.’

Rey can hardly imagine what something called _syrup cake_ might taste like, but it sounds better than the portions she risked her life for back on Jakku. ‘Is this all you do with your life? Hunt around the island for food?’ It’s not that she can’t relate to the lifestyle. It’s just … not what she expected, from a Jedi.

Nothing about any of this is what she expected.

The thing inside her swirls, terrifying in its unfamiliarity.

‘Of course not. I also visit the library.’ His voice hitches on a joke he doesn’t see fit to share. ‘Lose myself in a good book.’

‘That sounds very relaxing. Did you know they blew up the Hosnian System? A whole thriving population, obliterated in seconds.’

‘I cook for myself sometimes, too. The matron’s been teaching me a recipe for drop scones.’

‘Do you not give a damn about anyone besides yourself?’

Ben gives her a blank look. ‘I’ll make some for you later, if you like,’ he says at last, in a tone that suggests he thinks he's making an offer she can't refuse. He thinks she can be bought with food, thinks a Jakku scavenger won't dare turn away from a chance to fill her stomach. ‘They’re delicious with butter. We churn our own from Thala-siren milk.’

Every minute that goes by is a minute the First Order rages unchecked. Rey’s new friends are out there waiting for her, watching the skies and praying for her successful return. ‘I don’t want to eat your stupid drop scones.’

‘Fine,’ says Ben, his good mood curdling. ‘I’ll make them for myself. But I think you’ll change your mind once you smell them on the fire.’

* * *

The drop scones are exquisite. Soft and fluffy, they rise up in little puffs off the cooking stone and waft a sweet, eggy aroma that makes a strange but appetising medley with the smoke from the pitfire. Ben spreads pale blue butter over a piping hot scone and pops it in his mouth. Rey surrenders, and on biting into her own discovers that the dough is flecked through with pieces of dried fruit.

‘They’ve occupied Corellia,’ she says without much hope. ‘Forced the shipyards to start manufacturing war vessels for them. Enslaved huge swathes of the population to increase production speed.’

‘Lucky the galaxy has a great hero like Luke Skywalker to save it,’ says Ben around his mouthful.

* * *

She dreams again, and again, and again. Dreams of a temple burning, and her parents flying off into the distance. Dreams of an ancient tree that whispers _these are your first steps_ from a fissure in its trunk. Dreams of a voice inside her saying _you know him._

He takes her out into a sheltered bay around from the headlands to fish for pipis, tight thumb-sized clamshells that burrow in the shallow sands. He convinces her to sample a different kind of clamshell, called an oyster, which he pries open straight out of the water with a pocket knife. She hates the slimy texture and the coarse grit of saltwater sand on her tongue. He promises the pipis will be better. You cook them in a big pot of soup, he explains, and you know they’re good to eat when the shells crack open.

He won’t shut up about her strange, unwanted new power, and she parries each effort with a reminder of his family’s plight. ‘Why steal Luke’s research, if you didn’t want to recreate it for yourself?’ she needles. ‘It seems a low blow not to use what you’ve taken.’

‘Did you practice those lightsaber forms I showed you?’

‘No, I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy wondering whether everyone I’ve ever known has been blown up by a planet-killing weapon yet.’

He takes her to a tree that looks just like the one in her dream, with a fissure in its trunk that turns out to be full of ancient books. ‘Did you steal these from Luke Skywalker, too?’ she asks, feeling his temper flow back to her through the strange, niggling bond that still refuses to loosen its grip.

‘I have the foundational texts of the Jedi religion at my fingertips,’ he says. ‘I could teach you to master the power inside. You feel it too, don’t you? You know there’s a reason the Force sent you to me. You’re trying to fight your destiny. It won’t work. It never works.’

The caretakers bake them a syrup cake, and it’s even better than the name makes it sound. The crumb soaks up lashings of thick, treacly sauce that coats Rey’s tongue like velvet and pulls a moan from her throat that makes Ben turn bright red. He watches her intently as she eats. He’s right – Rey does feel it too. But they disagree on critical points of interpretation. They’re at an impasse and the script Leia drilled into Rey before she left isn’t working. Neither is her own improvisation.

‘You need to stop running from the fight,’ she tells him.

‘You need to stop hiding from the truth,’ he retorts.

They go fishing again the next day, and the day after. They both know he can draw this out as long as he likes. She can’t leave without him. But there’s more to his refusal than what he’s told her, and his words from their first argument still rattle in her brain. _Gullible fool. Luke Skywalker’s a liar. I’m never going back._

Pipis are much nicer than oysters. They have a salty, satisfying chew that keeps her jaw busy as she scoops them one by one out of her bowl, then out of Ben’s. The shells pile up on a little plate between them. He doesn’t protest once as she polishes off his dinner.

* * *

She dreams of a scarred, sunken face and a voice that whispers: _come to me. Fulfil your destiny. You cannot run forever._ She wakes to the sound of a terrified shout, and in the heart-pounding stillness that follows her violent awakening, it takes several moments to realise the shout didn't come from her. 

Ben's out of bed. Dressed in a rough linen night robe, hair tousled and jaw prickly, he meets her halfway between his hut and hers. His eyes are wild.

'It's time for you to leave,' he says. 'Now. Get your things and go. Get out of my sight.'

'I thought you wanted to teach me,' Rey says. She's groggy from sleep, ears ringing, mind struggling to catch the thread of what's going on. 

'I said, now. Go.' He's trembling, she notices. She hesitates, thoughts racing to catch up, but his anger holds the lead. ' _Leave_.'

'I'm not going anywhere without you,' Rey says. 'Your family are counting on me. The whole galaxy's counting on me. I'm not leaving unless you come too.'

Dark with rage, Ben seizes her wrist and yanks her in the direction of her ship. Rey reacts without thinking. She breaks his grip, blocks, strikes back, and they're fighting each other, grappling for control with shouts and rough hands and –

And a lightsaber, cutting the air with a vicious crackle. Rey didn't notice he was armed. Does he sleep with the awful thing underneath his pillow? Hers lives as far away as possible, buried in the bottom of a satchel where she doesn’t have to look at it. Wouldn’t be so bad to have with her now. She staggers back, heart pounding, sweat pouring, and Ben stares at her through the crackling blue glow-field of his blade. Stares at the hilt, at his own hand, like he's never seen either before. 

'You need to go,' he repeats. The anger's gone. He sounds like he's about to cry. 'You … you brought him here.'

'Ben,' says Rey slowly, 'put the lightsaber down.' The retracted hilt hits the ground with a muffled thud, and it's dark again, the settlement lit only by the half-moon and the last dull embers dying in the firepit.

'I'm sorry,' Ben chokes. 'I didn't … I wouldn't … it's him. Do you understand now? This is why I can't come with you.'

Rey doesn't understand at all. But Ben doesn't resist when she takes his arm and steers him to a seat by the firepit. The dim light laps over a bruise rising on his cheek from their clash. She can feel a sore spot on her jaw that probably looks similar, but that doesn't matter now. 'Who are you talking about? Who's him?'

'Snoke.' He says the word like a curse that sends a shiver down Rey's spine. He _is_ crying, Rey can see now, tears fighting to leak from his dark eyes between rapid-fire blinks. ‘Rey, what Luke told you … the night his temple burned … it was him. He…’ The tears win their battle, relentless in all the ways Rey came here wanting _Ben_ to be and all the ways he isn’t. ‘He wanted me to join the dark side. He was in my head, always, from the very beginning. But I…’

Ben doubles over, covering his face with his hands. Rey gives him his moment. When she thinks it’s been long enough, she puts a careful hand on his shoulder.

The caretakers are coming out of their huts. Rey sees one, eyes gleaming with concern through the crack of an open door, and motions helplessly at Ben. She hardly knows what the gesture means, but the caretaker nods her understanding, and the door snaps shut again. After a few moments it reopens more decisively, and she comes out in her habit, carrying a kettle and a plate of leftover syrup cake. Her tinkering buys Ben enough time to pull himself together. He lowers his hands from his face just in time for the caretaker to press a mug of hot tea into them, with another for Rey, and a thick wedge of cake for them both.

The sugar brings some natural colour back to Ben’s tear-streaked face. There’s a magic in food that Jakku never gave Rey a chance to see in action – but the caretaker, retreating as quietly as she came, seems confident in its power. ‘I’m sorry,’ he tells Rey in a wavering voice. ‘I never meant to draw my blade on you. I wouldn’t – I’d never really hurt you.’

She shakes her head. ‘Just tell me about Snoke.’

So he tells her. That night at the temple when he fought with Luke, the lightning from the sky that no one would ever believe he didn’t cause himself. The sinister voice in the back of his mind, goading him towards a fate so dark he can only express it in stiff, stuttered words between fortifying gulps of tea. He ran through the flames and snatched up all Luke’s research with the charts that led to the first Jedi temple. Came here to hide, putting all his faith in the sacred tranquility of this place to keep him safe from his shadow self. For six years it has worked and his mind has been quiet. Now, with her arrival, the voice has come back. The whispers Rey heard in her sleep came from his dreams, not hers.

‘Snoke’s come for you again because he knows his end is near,’ Rey says. She pulls the words from somewhere even Jakku’s harsh sun has never shone, but Ben’s upset enough not to question where she suddenly got her abundance of unearned confidence. ‘The final battle is about to be fought, and he knows that if you join the fray, it’ll mean his end. He wants to frighten you away from leaving this island with me. Don’t let him, Ben. We need your help. But I think perhaps we can help you, too.’

He looks up at her with hope in his puffy dark eyes, and the Force inside Rey hums with something she can only pray is a promise of success. It wasn’t lying to her. She _knows_ this man. And she knows, now, that her destiny was never to hand the war over to him and go back to her quiet life. Apparently, they’re in this fight together.

She’s no better equipped than he is. But one of them has to take the plunge.

* * *

The caretakers send them on their way with a truly ridiculous amount of food. There’s cold purplefin wrapped in neat foil packets, and a whole extra syrup cake, and a bag of Ben’s leftover drop scones with cool blue butter sandwiched between each pair. There’s a jug of sweetened Thala-siren milk and an ice bucket full of pipis for them to cook fresh on the Falcon’s tiny stove. Some oysters, too, which Rey briefly considers sampling a second time before deciding they can be Ben’s share. She’ll have his pipis instead.

Ben thanks the matron with warmth and regret, and says his goodbyes at a length that shows how reluctant he still is to leave. He looks queasy, and Rey knows he skipped breakfast before boarding the ship. ‘This is a mistake,’ he says over the thrum of the igniting engines. ‘I came here for a reason. I never planned to leave this island again.’

‘That was before you met me,’ says Rey, and then flushes bright red when she realises what her voice just sounded like. She was distracted by the Falcon’s controls. Hardly thinking of how it would come across.

But Ben smiles. It’s a really, really nice smile, and she can’t pretend she isn’t glad she’ll have all this extra time to get to know him. Not just for Leia, or Luke, or Han, or the Resistance. For herself. There’s something in this connection between them that she wants to explore deeper. Something in the Force awakening inside her that might be worth learning after all, if he’s teaching.

‘Yeah,’ is all he says, wan but sincere.

They break lightspeed with a glittering blue shudder, and –

* * *

And years pass. War rages. Eventually, they win.

They come back to Ahch-To one day, scarred and shaken by the horrors they’ve seen, but still alive. Bound together by the unbreakable threads of destiny, like Rey knew on some level they would be since that very first day she forced her way into his solitary life.

The thing inside her that began as a whisper has amplified into a roar, and when she wields her power, Ben looks at her the way she once expected she’d look at him. Like a Jedi hero, straight out of the stories. But on the island they leave all that behind.

They rake the sand for pipis in the sheltered bay, up to their knees in cold saltwater, and cook the shells in a pot over the fire while ageing fish nuns enjoy a night off from cooking.

The Force is in balance, and the galaxy is safe, and that first bite of briny, chewy shellfish tastes like coming home.


End file.
